The Circuit as Site

The notion of site can be broken down into two unique interrelated forms: 1.) as a physical location where some action can be performed; 2.) as the locus of thought, a notion which exists in conceptual space, about which ideas can develop and evolve. The circuit is a physical site; it has certain physical dimensions and is simultaneously a manifestation of ideas existing within conceptual space. As a physical object, the circuit becomes a site for the exploration of how we give form -- the ways in which we shape materials and relationships. The notion of the circuit is itself a conceptual site where we can examine and re-imagine our relationships between each other, our tools, and the environment, our entire situation of existence. Site also implies a temporal dimensionality, a location in time, and as it relates to human activity, a historical context. As the creation of technological development, the circuit can be approached as an artifact of cultural production; it is a physical record of human activity, a cumulative natural history of modern civilization, onto which every choice humankind has made as a species is indelibly etched.

Composition, Sculpture, Sound Art

Composition is most simply the way in which things are put together and the process by which things are created; the composition of an object is the whole of its constituents and how it is formed, the act of assemblage. From music composition we have the notion of assembling sound in space-time; the arranging or organizing of sounds and silence (John Cage). From the practice of sculpture we have the notion of composing a form either by subtraction, addition, juxtaposition, or agglomeration; the arranging of material and its absence. Musical composition and sculpture are intimately related; their approaches to form and structure manifest in different mediums but are of the same language, the confluence of both disciplines lies in the fields of architecture, acoustics, and sound installation.

New Mediums of Sculpture

There exists a conceptual space in which the principle philosophies of music composition and sculpture exist in the abstract, as qualities residing within the imagination. From here the approaches which guide the creation of works of sculpture and composition can be applied to one another. In electronics, the written score exists as the schematic, the map which dictates where current will flow, thus determining how components are placed. Its performance resides within the assembly of the electronic components and their relationships; arrangements and connections become the sculpted object, the body, the traces of a sequence of performative actions. The resulting circuit functions as the medium through which one directs the circulating of electrons. The circuit design then functions as the initial sketch - the conceptual starting point - for working with and sculpting materials. Those materials, the components and their connections - the physical body of the circuit - become the site for sculpting the flow of electrons.

Medium, Mediation, and Media

When the circuit functions as a tool for sculpting and directing the flow of electricity, the capacity for embodying forms of expression emerges. At the site, the transformation where expression is funneled down into eddies within the flow of electric current, the choice of how to translate that energy back into an output becomes meaningful; it becomes a choice of representation open to subjective interpretation. The output is crucial; it is the means by which we experience the electrical activity within the circuit and the process of translation from the abstract to the phenomenological. That it communicates information - be it purely expressive, factual or otherwise - places it within the definition of media. The choices that follow as consequence of this translation pertain to the problem of the interface: which events to translate to the flow of electrons and how; the nature and levels of mediation: the process by which events are translated into the flow of electrons; representation: the translation of the flow of electrons back into experience.

Technology as Ideology - A New Site for Cultural Critique

The form and functionality of a technology bears the marks of the society which created it. As an extension of our physicality and imagination, technology is born out of our needs and desires, hopes and fears. It is a demonstration of our mastery of the material world and the kinds of knowledge and beliefs - and social structures which foster such beliefs - such mastery entails. Anything made by human kind exists within the imagination prior to its creation. Contained within the form of the technological object is not only the practices of the culture which produces it but also the ideologies formed from way that culture re-imagines its own future. Thus the circuit, as a technological object and a site of historical significance, offers itself as a site for cultural critique.

Interconnection as a Consequence of Interrelation

There is a relationship between humankind and their creations; between their creations and the world from which they are both produced. A tool is developed so that we may shape our environment - to adapt to it and to adapt it to our needs, wants, and desires - and in doing so we ourselves are changed. As we extract and convert minerals from the earth's crust, using different energy sources to give them the imagined forms to suit their intended function, we affect change in our environment. We must adapt to our newly altered environment and continue to adapt or perish. Our technology and use of technological objects are outgrowths of our perceptual and cognitive faculties, those senses which aid in our continued survival, which connect us to our environment. Continued technological development has only altered the specifics of our relationship with our environment, however, we will always be dependent upon it. Our connection to the consequences of our actions arises from the interrelation of all things - reality exists as a network in which all discernible parts are constituents of a all encompassing whole. Because of the deeply interrelated nature of every one thing to the other, not a single thing is isolated from another; all things are interconnected.